Meteorologists Are Very Accurate (Yes, Really)

I’ve heard a version of this joke roughly 7,234,519 times in my life. The most common iteration is “must be nice to be wrong half the time and still get paid!”. Ugh. All I ask is that people be original when half-insulting me and my profession!

The truth is, meteorologists…those on TV, in the private sector, at the National Weather Service, are really good. Weather forecasts have never been more accurate. The lead time on tornado warnings is (on average) around 13-15 minutes. The accuracy of hurricane track forecasts is excellent.

But of course, we aren’t always right. And never will be. A lot of people have trouble with this. I get it. If your picnic/graduation/golf outing is ruined by weather, it’s maddening. Especially if the forecast led you astray.

Let’s pull back the curtain on our internal accuracy numbers

I take accuracy very seriously and it drives me crazy when a forecast is off. Especially if it’s an impactful situation like a snow storm or severe weather. If it’s August and my forecast high was 81 and it ends up being 86 it irks me but that kind of “bust” doesn’t really impact anyone significantly. That said, temperatures are the easiest thing to track so let me show you how we are doing so far this year. I keep very detailed records on our temperature accuracy dating back 5 years. The spreadsheet I use is pretty slick; I enter the forecast highs and lows as well as the actual observations and the spreadsheet produces easy-to-read accuracy numbers.

Let’s dig into a few of these numbers. So far in 2018, our high temperature forecast for the following day is within TWO degrees 70% of the time and within 3 degrees 84% of the time.

Skip ahead to DAY 7: We get the temperature right within 2 degrees 38% of the time and within 5 degrees 64% of the time. Not bad for 7 days out and I suspect these numbers would surprise some.

Meteorologists vs. Atheletes

Professional athletes are incredible and I would love to have even a shred of their talent. But here’s what they aren’t doing: predicting the future! Let’s look at the “success” rate of athletes at the top of the major sports.

MLB

Mookie Betts of the Red Sox leads the majors in hitting right now with a batting average of .350. That’s a very impressive number but means he is still failing to get a hit 65% of the time! If my forecast busted 65% of the time i would be in a world of hurt. Yet in baseball this is succeeding at very high level.

NBA

Clint Capela of the Rockets led the league in field goal percentage last season at about 65%. A great number but below our rate of getting the temperature right within 2 degrees (for the following day) of 70%. And again we are predicting the future!

NFL

Drew Brees led the NFL in completion percentage last year but still threw an incompletion 28% of the time. If I failed on snowfall forecasts at a rate of 28% I think I’d need to reconsider my career choices.

In Conclusion

The point of this post is not to brag. We’re accurate but I’d like to be a LOT more accurate and I am always trying to get these numbers higher. Every “bust” is a learning opportunity. Meteorologists who don’t learn from their mistakes don’t typically have a long career in this profession. This can be said of nearly every profession but it’s especially true in a line of work that places a premium on accuracy. Sometimes I compare our job to referees/umpires. Most referees at the top of their profession get FAR more calls right than wrong. Yet their reputation is that they “are all blind” and what not. It’s especially bad if they blow a very important call at the end of a very big game. A ref could have gotten every call right up until that point but it doesn’t matter if he affected the outcome of the game by making a high-profile screw up. In our job, all these accuracy numbers are great and everything but in January if I say there will be 1-2″ of snow and there ends up being 10″ and people’s days are severely impacted, it’s very easy for the old “meteorologists are always wrong” cliches to come out. It’s part of the reason I don’t sleep much before big storms! That’s ok…I love it. Couldn’t imagine doing anything else!